While
old English communities no doubt frowned on unmarried couples living together,
and certainly would not have approved of them having children together, there
is no reason to suppose it was uncommon.
When
we look at baptism entries in older parish registers we often find children
with second names and, occasionally, more than one child in a family had the
same second name. I pointed out in a post on March 17, 2015 that some
children were given the names of their grandparents or great-grandparents as
second forenames. But there was also a group for which no father was listed and
an assumption was made that the second name was really the missing father’s
surname.
I
was contacted by a family researcher recently to see if I could find burial
information on a man named Amos Rice. We found a marriage record for him, to
Sarah Bond, in the marriage register for Plympton St. Mary parish, Devon, dated
April 13, 1784. Both were shown as resident in the parish. There was no baptism
entry for him. In fact there were no families of that name in the area prior to
the 1800s. We have not found a death or burial entry for him either although
Sarah was buried in the parish in 1818 at the age of 78.
The
parish baptism register did not show any children of the couple at least with
the name Rice. But there were seven entries for children of Sarah Bond between
1763 and 1784, all of them “base born” and four of them with a second name of
Rice. The Rice name began with the 1777 baptism. The last child was baptized
just 23 days before Amos and Sarah were married. The coincidence of second
names strongly suggests that the couple was living together for at least seven
years. What finally prompted them to make it legal is anyone’s guess at this
point.
There
is no evidence about where Amos had come from or what happened to him after his
marriage to Sarah, other than mentions of the family in a series of entries in
the Overseers Register of Applicants for Relief between 1805 and 1823. It
appears that Amos was sick and/or in need, possibly for many years. The parish
provided cash and clothes to assist the family, including help for an unmarried
daughter who was “in childbed”.
Judging
by the entries it seems likely that most of the entries that mentioned an Amos
Rice were actually for the son of Amos and Sarah. The only one that can be
linked to Amos Senior is an 1806 entry when and entry showing that funds were
paid to Sarah also indicated “Husband ill”. In all entries after that it is not
possible to distinguish where the relief was paid to Amos Senior or Amos
Junior.
Amos
Junior’s story is interesting as well. He was baptized in 1777 as Amos Rice
Bond. He was also married under that name in 1799. But all of his children were
baptized with the surname Rice with one of them having a second name of Bond.
He was also buried as Amos Rice in 1842, in Plymptons St. Mary parish. It is
clear he was eventually convinced that his father was, in fact, Amos Rice and
that he should carry that name.
In
the parish marriage register there are four marriages that could be for
children of this family. Mary Bond married Robert Shiers in 1791; she may not
have been Amos’ daughter as she was one of Sarah’s children that did not have a
second name of Rice. Amos Rice Bond, as mentioned above, married Mary Warren in
1799. Ann Rice married David Dunn in 1801; she had been baptized as Annrice
Bond in 1778. Sarah Rice married Robert Andrews in 1804; she also had been
baptized with the surname Bond in 1784. The last two grooms were soldiers and
not from the Plympton area.
So
we have another example of people whose surname changed over time. In this case
it appears the children knew who their parents were and the number with the
second name of Rice indicates the couple lived together in what we would now consider a common law
relationship.
Wayne
Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in
England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has
published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past
Editor of Chinook, the quarterly
journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides
genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated
